The drones developed for military purposes are fused with various IT technologies to open new markets. Recently, it has been applied to various fields such as swarming warfare and data collection in WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) by using small cluster drones instead of single drones. These small cluster drones have higher density than unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous vehicles, so there is a high possibility of collision between drones.
In this paper, we propose a novel TDMA based MAC protocol for ensuring the transmission of safety messages between the drones in swarming drone networks. In general, large-scale swarming drones tend to have higher density compared to unmanned aerial vehicles or autonomous vehicular networks, and therefore it is very important for drones to successfully share location information with each other to prevent their collisions. The proposed scheme guarantees an opportunity of data transmission to the drones via a method of occupying the time slots through the competition. It also gives priority to the drone that has occupied the slot in the previous frame, ensuring safety message transmission. The proposed scheme is implemented and evaluated by the NS-3 simulator, and it is confirmed to be recovered from any message collision problem faster than the WAVE, the de-facto standard for vehicular communications, and to maintain the high packet reception ratio.